Context (63 page)

He
hurdled a fallen, shattered pillar, ran on across the broken ground. Hoping
that Kraiv was far from danger; praying -somewhere inside—that there would be
trouble. Because some part of Tom needed action, massive and immediate: to rip
and tear more than imaginary enemies; to work out his rage with blood, not some
prissy logotropic sabotage.

He ran.

For the...

No. Not that.

For Elva.

And
then he was past the camp’s perimeter—so much for the sentries—and skidding to
a halt on shale almost before he realized that he was in the renegade band’s
midst.

They were seated, drinking,
around a large thermoglow. None of them, not even the sentry standing on an
outcrop overhead, wore his uniform correctly fastened; they looked like
deserters, probably marauders.

Too late, Tom saw that Kraiv was
sitting among them, on a flat rock with a large flask in his hands—the morphospear
laid aside, out of reach—and deduced that the carl’s strategy had been more
subtle than frontal attack.

Behind them lay a black cave
where fluorofungus did not grow; that would be where they kept any prisoners
who still lived.

‘Stranger!’ It was a warning, not
a greeting.

But the sentry’s words—as he
fumbled for his graser rifle—were unnecessary. Exploding from their places
round the thermoglow, the men grabbed weapons without hesitation, swinging them
round to bear on Tom.

Then it all happened very fast.

Kraiv was on his feet—big and
ursine—smashing two soldiers’ heads together before anyone knew he had moved.
Another stepped into his path; Kraiv banged him in the centre of his forehead
with one great fist: he dropped like a marionette whose lev-field had crashed.

And Kraiv now held the
morphospear.

Three soldiers split from the
group—two youths, and a veteran who probably knew of the carls’ prowess—and ran
towards Tom. A scything kick took the first one down, but the others kept
coming ...

Move.

Sentry, overhead.

The air cracked. Graser fire blew
apart the rocks beneath Tom’s feet. But he was already going down, snatching
the fallen man’s graser as he rolled, and came up on one knee taking careful
aim upwards, and pressed the firing stud.

An explosion of blood ripped the
sentry’s body in two.

Tom
spun back towards the camp—and froze.

What took place next defied any
description he might later give, awestruck before an exhibition of warrior
spirit such as he had never imagined, nor ever hoped to see.

For few men witness true
berserker rage and live to tell it.

Two
dozen soldiers—more, thirty—came for him in a pack, but Kraiv’s great figure
moved fast—massive muscles sliding beneath glistening black skin: a warrior—as
the great opalescent morphospear slid and moaned through the air like a living
thing.

As a wide flat halberd, it sliced
through limbs. Then it snapped into a cupped, parabolic configuration,
shielding Kraiv from spitting graser fire, before lancing out, long and straight,
to impale the shooter through his soft throat.

Huge, heavy, blood-hungry: only
Kraiv could have wielded such a weapon.

Roaring, he swung in a great arc,
and four men fell before his long—now scimitar-bladed—morphospear. Then a group
of their comrades, armed with entrenching cutters and bare hands, fell on Kraiv—and
died, as he appeared to shrug his huge muscles, threw them in all directions,
then sliced them down.

Two soldiers had graser rifles
but they looked in fear as Kraiv reared up before them, swung down, and then
their butchered limbs lay streaming blood upon the stones beside their fallen
weapons.

More of their comrades turned and
ran.

But three men, lean-faced and
lupine, now circled Kraiv with monopole daggers drawn: quiet, coordinated,
knife-fighters used to working as a team. Even the briefest exposure of a limb,
his torso, would gain Kraiv a tendon-slicing cut, an organ-piercing thrust—

He yelled as he advanced, but
they fell back towards the cave, a feint, then spread out. With blades, they
could attack from all angles with no risk of crossfire; and they could deliver
tiny, progressively weakening cuts, before stepping in close for the kill.

They sprang at Kraiv —

No!

— who whirled, arms wide, in what
surely must be a fatal mistake —

Do it.

— except that the morphospear had
cleaved in two, into blazing blades which cut infinity symbols into the air as
Kraiv spun through their midst, then stepped back, chest heaving.

Splashed blood, dying moans.

There were two more left, two soldiers
with weapons drawn, who looked at the dark cavemouth, at each other, then
turned to run.

Each of Kraiv’s weapons became
hatchet-shaped as he hurled them, spinning through the air, burying their heavy
blades with a thud in the fleeing soldiers’ spines. Two corpses fell, arms
outstretched towards lost salvation.

Kraiv held out his hands, palm
upwards, as though in prayer.

Both hatchets’ hafts elongated—grew
impossibly long and thin, stretching towards their master—then looped
themselves round his massive wrists, and tugged their blades free with a liquid
slurp. Fat burgundy blood drops spattered and gobbet-stained grey vertebrae
fell aside as the twin weapons sucked back into shape, merged into one, and the
great morphospear was whole again, sharp and ready.

Kraiv turned towards Tom, death
shining in his eyes.

‘My friend. Kraiv.’

The huge carl stopped, breathing
hard, veins like cords prominent across black iron muscles, until slowly the
tension and berserker rage attenuated, faded to nothing, and he was human and
civilized once more.

From
the small dank cave at the camp’s rear, Kraiv led forth two women—careful not
to touch them, even when they stumbled—whose torn clothes, bloodied skin and
shrinking posture told Tom everything he needed to know about what had happened
here.

Neither woman gloated at the
evidence of vengeance all around them. Instead they shivered as they passed the
corpses—the taller woman weeping silently—granted no release by the sight of
hot ripped meat which had so recently been real and powerful, revelling in
power to brutalize their victims, to tear fragile humanity to shreds.

It
took nearly three more tendays to reach the Dorionim Goldu.

In a marketplace, among
holosprite tables and narl-egg vendors, they found the leaders of a local
Urdikani community, distant kin to the two refugee women—Hani and Ravi by name—who
agreed to find them shelter, and who listened with saddened sympathy to a
too-familiar tale of families gone to war and not returning, of armed invaders
who crashed into ordinary lives, turned peaceful Aqua Halls into blood-soaked
scenes of horror, left children dead, and stunned survivors with fractured
lives.

Tom and his companions bade them
a short farewell. Tears tracked without shame down the trio’s faces, as they
followed the directions they had been given, and headed for the Blue Lotus
Hong.